Welcome summertime this year with a return to old fashioned outdoor living. Dust off the barbeque cooking fork, bring the hammock out of storage, and plan to have a variety of outdoor games on hand to make the most of the beautiful summer season.

One great activity your young ones will enjoy time after time is parachute play. Available in multi-colours with handles, play parachutes allow several children to join in the games by simply grabbing on. Jump-rope rhymes, over and under, hide and seek are all parachute play favourites. What a wonderful way for the younger set to play in the sunshine, get some exercise, and learn cooperation with their friends!

If a summertime birthday is coming up, it is easy to set up some great garden games in advance which will keep the birthday kid and company busy whilst you are preparing treats. Bean bag toss requires only an upright board with holes and some colourful palm-sized bean bags. A sack-racing course is a matter of a starting line, a finish line, and some burlap bags. You might want to enlist the help of an older brother or sis to time the races with a stopwatch, or simply stand by to declare the winners.

For ‘tweens and teens, a few sessions of beach blanket Twister fits the bill, complete with inflatable dice advance the play. Add some cordial and biscuits to help them refuel, and the game could continue until the sun goes down!

The accomplished sports enthusiasts among your brood will enjoy a challenging game of croquet on the garden lawn, or for something new and interesting, why not set up a miniature Frisbee golf course to test the skills of the toughest competitor? Boules is another competitive outdoor activity which challenges the skill of the participants, and requires only the equipment and a flat expanse of lawn.

When things heat up at midday, turn on the sprinkler and everybody can make an end run to cool off. With lots of refreshing iced beverages and a bit of rest in the shade to regroup, your crew will be ready for round two by early afternoon. No shade trees in the garden? Not to worry–just set out a nifty pop-up sun shelter or two where your tribe and their guests can take a sun break. The Caribee Sun Shelter is the perfect choice for instant shade.

Grown-ups can enjoy summer in the garden as well. While the younger set is frolicking, why not set up a relaxing board game under the umbrella? Sip a tall cool drink while you give your brain a work-out, trying to trounce the competition with the highest score. Scrabble, Monopoly, cards, you choose. A little mood music on the portable CD player and adults can enjoy their own idea of summertime fun.

Cleanrooms are sterile places where certain products are manufactured, but unlike most manufacturing environments, cleanrooms must be monitored at all times for particulate matter in the air. If the particles in the air become too large, the clean room may be disrupted and product production must be stopped.

Contamination can be caused by a number of different sources including:

• Equipment

• People

• Manufacturing Process

Generally the standards required with the manufacture of a particular item, will determine the level of airborne contaminants that are allowed to be present in the clean room at any given time. Federal Standard 209E is usually used to define the standard. This document provides the different classes of air cleanliness that should be in a clean room depending on what is being produced.

Because clean rooms are closely monitored, there are always certain rules and procedures regarding entering a clean room, leaving a clean room, and how to behave while in a clean room. This is due to the fact that the only way to control contaminants in the environment is to completely control the level of activity in the environment.

Therefore, most clean rooms will require those who enter to do it a certain way and wear certain clothes. These clothes will help keep contamination at bay and by dictating how one enters the clean room, contaminants are once again kept at bay.

For example, a clean room may require all entering to cover their entire body and wear a respirator. This is due to the fact that a single strand of human hair, or even too much carbon dioxide released from human breathing can cause disaster in certain clean rooms. Certain cleanrooms will also limit the speed of movement within the cleanroom because too much movement can sometimes cause airborne particles that are too large to be in the cleanroom.

Other ways in which clean rooms are kept at certain levels of airborne contaminants are:

• Cleanroom Specific Pressure

• Cleanroom Specific Temperature

• Cleanroom Specific Humidity

• Specific Air Filtration of Cleanroom

Using such control factors will help keep the room as ‘clean’ as it should be and prevent too much contamination from getting in. Cleanrooms are also cleaned using very specific methods at regular intervals to keep all contamination away.

If the clean room is contaminated then it should be cleaned and sterilized once again. This is a long process that is also a bit expensive to do. Therefore, it is much easier for companies that have clean rooms to adhere to strict guidelines regarding their clean rooms and everyone who enters.

Cleanrooms are a necessity like many other manufacturing environments that exist today. However, unlike other manufacturing environments, not just anyone can enter a clean room because they require special care. For this reason, those who work in clean rooms are usually only a select few who can keep them clean and productive at all times.

Early childhood educators have called play “children’s work”. Many parents believe their children should be doing something more productive than merely having fun. But, actually, play fosters physical, emotional, intellectual and social development. Encouraging your child to play is vital for his development as well as his happiness.

What is Play?

The dictionary refers to play as recreation. Recreation is a very significant word in building and sustaining strong families. If you capitalize and hyphenate this important word it becomes Re-Creation. This is exactly what having fun with your family by playing games and sharing activities can do. Playing together can recreate your family. It can revitalize, rejuvenate and inspire with energy, life and laughter. It can offer the whole families another chance to connect on a level that you perhaps are not connecting on right now.

We frequently consider play only as the opposite of work, thus we can only have fun when the work is done. I propose that we incorporate play into work sometimes and other times we spend time re-creating ourselves before or after the chores have been accomplished. It is amazing how energized everyone will be after a game of tag in the yard. You will be astounded at how quickly the dishes get done when everyone knows it is a Monopoly or UNO night.

Use Imagination and energy to have fun

In past generations, kids learned to create fun by using personal resources-imagination and energy. We were outside running, jumping, building and creating for hours and hours. Our play usually ended only when our mothers called us in for dinner or a bath.

Today’s child is generally programmed with a fully scheduled week of lessons and highly competitive adult managed and supervised sports. Any free time is spent passively watching television leaving little opportunity to develop creativity and initiative.

By establishing a time to “play” you are stimulating your children’s creativity and imagination. Children who learn early to take initiative for providing their own entertainment are less likely in the future to depend on artificial stimulants to “turn themselves on.”

Establish a Family Fun Night

Many of us are employed in highly stressful jobs and the list of stress-related illnesses grows daily. The more stressed and cranky we are, the less our children want to be around us. By planning quality time spent just fooling around with our kids, the whole family will come out a winner.

As the characteristics of the family have changed over the years with more mothers working outside the house and fathers expected to play a greater role in the child rearing, it is a perfect opportunity to incorporate with the whole family a special time. But how about the many step-families, one-parent families and transient families who move frequently and live far from extended family? This is a method for creating unity and making the most of time together.

The family unit defines who we are and shapes our character. It is in the family dynamic that we learn the important lessons of self-discipline, the art of compromise, cooperation, forgiveness, honesty and fair play. By sharing activities on a regular basis we can teach by example as well as with verbal and non-verbal clues. There is a sense of safety in learning life skills in the family setting and then incorporating them into the real world. We know we will always be loved, even if we do strike out or make a mistake or look foolish sometimes.

Many children are being raised by the television.

Oh sure, they might have moms and dads who pay the rent, fix the meals, and drive them to sports practice, but essentially they are learning their standards, morals and ethics from a 24 inch box in their bedroom or the family room.

Mary Pittaway, registered dietician who heads up the WIC (Women, Infants and Children) program in our community has said “children spend eight hours sleeping, two hours eating, five hours at school, 6 hours watching TV, less than one hour in physical activity, three hours engaged in other activities and five minutes in meaningful conversation with their parents on any given day.”

Kids who spend too much time in front of a TV or video game are at risk for a great many health concerns, especially type II diabetes, which is skyrocketing among young children. Overweight children are more vulnerable to high blood pressure, gall bladder disease, asthma, and bone and joint problems.

What happens when children don’t have play time?

The most devastating result of inactivity and obesity in our children is an emotional cycle of low self-esteem. The less they like themselves, the less likely they are to participate in sports or be active physically-the very thing that could help them. We can lecture them about the benefits of activity, but they will listen and participate more readily if the whole family is involved and it doesn’t single them or their problem out.

For a free report on “Helping Your Child Fit In” go to my website http://www.ArtichokePress.com. In that report you will find that one of the major problems facing left out kids is the inability to play with others. Many classroom and playground problems of fitting in, being clumsy, perceptual-motor skills, social and emotional inadequacies, may be prevented or lessened by parents developing a time to do movement activities, which means in common language, play with their infants and children on an on-going basis.

Will play help your child succeed in life?

The games and activities you share as a family does not automatically guarantee better communication, healthier bodies and minds or a close-knit family. However, being available, approachable, and willing to step out of your comfort zone will insure a higher chance of children who succeed in life.

All of these activities are just vehicles to bring you and your child into close contact for a period of time where barriers are down and talking and laughing are up. Conversations and meaningful dialog will follow, maybe not right away, but kids recognize that you are willing to relax and spend time with them.

They don’t want you as a pal but they do need you as a friend. Best friends play, laugh and hang out together frequently. They build bonds of loyalty, respect and love that last forever. Playful parenting is more than just fun and games. Come on; let’s go kick the ball around the back yard.